Heck, insider corruption is so pervasive that it even causes problems in those rare instances when government is doing sensible.

Let’s look at the example of the EB-5 program that was set up to attract wealthy foreigners to America if they create jobs.

This should be a feel-good story. After all, everyone presumably agrees that these are best type of immigrants since there’s no danger that they’ll wind up on the welfare rolls.

In theory, the program is very simple. As explained by Wikipedia, “individuals must invest $1,000,000…, creating or preserving at least 10 jobs for U.S. workers.”

In reality, though, the program is a bureaucratic mess because…well, simply because that’s the way government operates.

And that means plenty of opportunities for corrupt insiders to work the system.

Here are some of the unseemly details of one example. As reported by the Washington Post, it involves an Obama appointee, the Governor of Virginia, and the brother of Hillary Clinton.

The now-No. 2 official at the Department of Homeland Security intervened on behalf of politically connected favor seekers — including Democrat Terry McAuliffe not long before he was elected Virginia governor, a new report from the department’s inspector general has found. The intervention, on behalf of McAuliffe’s GreenTech Automotive company, “was unprecedented,” according to the report… The long-anticipated report reviewed Mayorkas’s management of the EB-5 program, which allows foreign nationals who create jobs in the United States to obtain green cards. The report concluded that Mayorkas’ actions “created an appearance of favoritism and special access.’’ …McAuliffe’s company was working Gulf Coast Funds Management, a firm that specializes in obtaining EB-5 visas for investors. Gulf Coast was led by Anthony Rodham, brother of then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. …In addition to the case involving McAuliffe’s car company, the inspector general focused on actions Mayorkas took on behalf of a film project in Los Angeles and construction of a casino in Las Vegas, the latter supported by Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, who was Senate majority leader at the time.

Speaking of Senator Reid, the Washington Free Beaconexposes his sordid – and extended – efforts to use the power of his office to get special treatment for donors…and to line the pockets of his son.

The Senate’s top Democrat was more deeply involved than previously known in an effort to secure U.S. visas for Chinese investors in a Las Vegas casino despite the concerns of career federal officials, according to an inspector general report released on Tuesday. …Executives at the casino’s parent company, a client of Reid’s son Rory, donated thousands of dollars to Reid’s campaign after he helped speed consideration of its applications for visas for its Chinese investors. That expedited consideration came despite warnings from career USCIS officials that applicants had forged paperwork, tried to conceal the sources of their investment, and, in one case, had ties to a child pornography business. …new details in the inspector general’s report reveal that his involvement was deeper and more prolonged. Reid requested and received regular updates from then-USCIS director Alejandro Mayorkas on the status of SLS’ EB-5 applications, agency employees told the IG. The IG report criticized Mayorkas for creating an “appearance of favoritism” in the EB-5 application process. …the senator also had connections to Stockbridge/SBE Holdings, the company behind the SLS project. His son Rory, then an attorney at Lionel Sawyer & Collins, a Nevada law firm, represented SBE Entertainment, one of its parent companies. …USCIS employees interviewed for the IG report described the process as unfair and overly political.

By the way, notice how both examples feature a relative of a powerful politician. Why is that? Because if you’re related to a DC bigwig, donors and special interest groups figure you have inside access to the favor factory in Washington.

But now let’s step back and consider the big picture. In most cases, eliminating an agency or shutting down a program is the simple way to deal with DC corruption.

What’s the right approach, though, when government is actually doing something that’s theoretically useful.

Remember, the underlying theory of the EB-5 program is very admirable. Indeed, many nations have similar “economic citizenship” programs because it makes sense to attract successful investors to your country.

Big nations such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and Spain have policies similar to America’s EB-5 program, as do little countries such as Latvia, St. Kitts and Nevis, Cyprus, Dominica, Malta, and Antigua and Barbuda.

So why is America’s system a mess? In part, the answer is that it’s not a simple system. Unlike other nations, where a simple cash payment or property purchase qualifies an investor for residency, the U.S. system requires the creation of 10 jobs. As you can imagine, it’s not necessarily a simple matter to measure job creation, particularly if an investor is putting money into a business that’s already in operation.

And this means the bureaucrats who oversee the program have a reason to drag their feet. Which means an opportunity for well-connected insiders to manipulate the system to the advantage of their friends, cronies, donors, and clients.

Moreover, all nations require some form of background check to weed out criminals. That’s a good thing, of course, but it also gives bureaucrats another excuse to avoid quick approvals. And this creates an opportunity for lobbyists and other members of the political class to use their political pull to get their clients quick and favorable treatment.

All of which means the rule of law is eroded and replaced by discretionary and arbitrary enforcement.

But it was also very interesting to hear reports from various nations about the operation of their programs. Most of them have shortcomings, to be sure, but it does appear that politicians in America have made our system one of the least effective.

For further background on the seemingly unbreakable link between big government and corruption, here’s a video I narrated for the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.

But on the negative side, Sweden has one of the world’s biggest welfare states. Even after the spending restraint of the 1990s, the public sector consumes about 50 percent of economic output. And that necessitates a punitive tax code.

Today, let’s build on our understanding of Sweden by looking at how the country’s welfare state interacts with the immigration system.

Writing for CapX, Nima Sanandaji discusses these issues in his adopted country of Sweden.

Sweden has had an unusually open policy towards refugee and family immigrants. The Swedish Migration Agencyestimates that around 105,000 individuals will apply for asylum only this year, corresponding to over one percent of Sweden’s entire population.

This openness is admirable, but is it successful? Are immigrants assimilating and contributing to Sweden’s economy?

Unfortunately, the answer in many cases is no.

…the open attitude towards granting immigrants asylum is not matched by good opportunities on the labor market. An in-depth study by the daily paper Dagens Nyheter shows that many migrants struggle to find decent work even ten years after entering the country. …The median income for the refugees in the group was found to be as low as £880 a month. The family immigrants of refugees earned even less. Ten years after arriving in the country, their median income was merely £360 a month. These very low figures suggest that a large segment of the group is still relying on welfare payments. Dagens Nyheter can show that at least four out of ten refugees ten years after arrival are supported by welfare. The paper acknowledges that this is likely an underestimation.

So what’s the problem? Why are immigrants failing to prosper?

Nima suggests that government policies are the problem, creating perverse incentives for long-term dependency.

The combination of generous benefits, high taxes and rigid labour regulations reduce the incentives and possibilities to find work. Entrapment in welfare dependency is therefore extensive, in particular amongst immigrants. Studies havepreviouslyshownthat even highly educated groups of foreign descent struggle to become self-dependent in countries such as Norway and Sweden. …The high-spending model is simply not fit to cope with the challenges of integration.

The part about “highly educated groups” is particularly important since it shows that the welfare trap doesn’t just affect low-skilled immigrants (particularly when high tax rates make productive activity relatively unattractive).

Our example today deals with the fact that the United Kingdom has a very punitive tax on air passengers, but the U.K. government also is devolving some powers to regions such as Scotland. And this bit of decentralization is already generating some pressure for tax reductions.

The UK government’s decision to devolve control of Air Passenger Duty (APD) to Holyrood means that a family of four could eventually be saving as much as £388 for a one-way journey to long-haul destinations. The promise to hand the Scottish Government control of APD is part of the UK government’s devolution package… The Scottish Government last week said it would halve the rate within the next Parliament and abolish completely “when the public finances allow”.

That sounds like good news for travelers, but some folks aren’t happy.

…airports as well as tourism bodies south of the border are up in arms, fearing that it will create an uneven playing field for the aviation sector as passengers in the catchment areas of airports such as Newcastle, Manchester and Liverpool will simply drive across the border to rival airports in Scotland to avoid potentially huge APD costs. Newcastle airport’s planning director Graeme Mason told the Sunday Herald that Scotland cutting or scrapping the passenger levy would create an unfair “cross-border market distortion” that would fester unless the UK government matches any reduction in APD south of the border.

Notice the Orwellian distortion of language from Mr. Mason. We’re supposed to view lower taxes as a “cross-border market distortion.”

But what he (and others) refer to as a “distortion” is actually the healthy process of competition.

Just as the I-Phone was a “distortion” for the Blackberry, but very good news for consumers. Just as the personal computer was a “distortion” for the typewriter industry, but very good news for consumers.

Countries, just like companies, should suffer when they don’t provide good value in exchange for people’s hard-earned money.

Here’s more from the story, including the fact that English airports in the long run will probably benefit because the government will now feel pressure to lower the tax burden on air travel.

…anyone travelling long-haul could potentially save themselves hundreds of pounds. The saving could be enough, for example, to undermine direct flights between Newcastle and New York that are set to launch in the May. But in Scotland, the decision to devolve APD to Holyrood has been greeted with delight by airports, the tourist industry and businesses which have campaigned both before and since the independence referendum to get rid of the tax. And many of those behind the campaign say that airports in England will eventually benefit from the abolition of the tax in Scotland, as this increases pressure on the UK government to follow suit.

After introducing a form of APD in 2008 the Dutch government scrapped the tax within a year after Dutch residents started travelling in their droves to airports in neighbouring Germany to avoid the tax. Belgium, Denmark, Malta and Norway have also scrapped flight taxes for similar reasons. That leaves the UK as one of only five countries in Europe to levy a passenger departure tax (the others being Austria, France, Germany and Italy) but the UK tax is, on average, five times higher than those other countries and is thought to be the highest in the world… In 2011 the UK government was forced to slash APD on long-haul flights in Northern Ireland, to stem the flow of passengers travelling south to Dublin to take advantage of the Republic of Ireland’s low and now abolished tax on flights.

By the way, the story also reminds us about how dangerous it is to give a government a new source of revenue.

Air Passenger Duty (APD) was introduced by John Major’s UK Conservative government in 1994. It was originally payable at just £5 for one-way domestic and European flights and £10 elsewhere but it has become a nice little earner for successive governments who have steadily increased the levy to the point that it is now the highest tax of its kind anywhere in the world. Long-haul flights in the cheapest economy class are now charged between £67 and £94 per flight, depending on the distance travelled. Other classes of travel, including so-called premium economy class, are charged between £138 and £194 per long-haul flight while anyone travelling in a small plane is charged between £276 and £388 per flight.

Since we’re on the topic of tax competition, let’s look at the tennis world to see how taxes drive behavior.

In her column for the Wall Street Journal, Allysia Finley explains that top tennis players respond to fiscal incentives.

…tennis players respond to economic incentives and often act as strategically off the court as on. For the past three years Spain’sRafael Nadal…has bowed out of England’s annual Queen’s Club tournament, traditionally a Wimbledon warm-up, because the U.K. charges foreign athletes a prorated tax on their world-wide income (including endorsements). The more tournaments he plays in Britain, the more he owes Her Majesty’s Government.

The top five French players on the men’s circuit— Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Gael Monfils, Gilles Simon, Julien Benneteau and Richard Gasquet, as well as Germany’s Philipp Kohlschreiber, all claim residence in Switzerland, ostensibly to avoid paying their home countries’ punitive 45% top personal income-tax rates (not including surcharges or social-security contributions). …the most popular haven for tennis players is the principality of Monaco, which doesn’t tax foreigners’ world-wide income. …Swedish tennis legends Bjorn Borg and Mats Wilander escaped to Monte Carlo during their primes in the 1970s and ’80s to dodge their home country’s 90% top marginal rate, which has since fallen to 57%. …Today, Monaco is the putative home of many of the world’s top-ranked men and women players. They include Serbia’s Novak Djokovic (1), the Czech Republic’s Petra Kvitova (4), Tomas Berdych (7) and Lucie Safarova (16); Canada’s Milos Raonic (8); Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki (8); Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov (11); and Ukraine’s Alexandr Dolgopolov (23). Players who hail from former communist countries are especially keen, it seems, on keeping their hard-earned money.

Even inside the United States, we see the benefits of tax competition.

Florida is one of the big winners and California is a big loser.

The U.S. has its own Monaco: no-income-tax Florida. It’s no coincidence that America’s top-ranked players Serena (1) andVenus Williams(18) and John Isner (21), as well as Russia’sMaria Sharapova(2) and Japan’s Kei Nishikori (5) live in the Sunshine State. So do twins Mike and Bob Bryan, who have won 16 Grand Slam doubles titles. Like the Williamses, they come from California, where the 13.3% state income-tax rate is the nation’s highest.

Indeed, it’s not just tennis players. Golfers like Tiger Woods have Florida residency. And those that remain in California are plotting their escapes.

So I shouldn’t be surprised that he wants to catch me making an error. But I’m not sure his “gotcha” moment is very persuasive. Here’s some of what he wrote for today’s New York Times.

Gov. Jerry Brown was able to push through a modestly liberal agenda of higher taxes, spending increases and a rise in the minimum wage. California also moved enthusiastically to implement Obamacare. …Needless to say, conservatives predicted doom. …Daniel J. Mitchell of the Cato Institute declared that by voting for Proposition 30, which authorized those tax increases, “the looters and moochers of the Golden State” (yes, they really do think they’re living in an Ayn Rand novel) were committing “economic suicide.”

Kudos to Krugman for having read Atlas Shrugged, or for at least knowing that Rand sometimes referred to to “looters and moochers.” Though I have to subtract points because he thinks I’m a conservative rather than a libertarian.

But what about his characterization of my position? Well, he’s right, though I’m predicting slow-motion suicide. Voting for a tax hike isn’t akin to jumping off the Golden Gate bridge. Instead, by further penalizing success and expanding the burden of government, California is engaging in the economic equivalent of smoking four packs of cigarettes every day instead of three and one-half packs.

Here’s some of what I wrote.

I’m generally reluctant to make predictions, but I feel safe in stating that this measure is going to accelerate California’s economic decline. Some successful taxpayers are going to tunnel under the proverbial Berlin Wall and escape to states with better (or less worse) fiscal policy. And that will mean fewer jobs and lower wages than otherwise would be the case.

Anyhow, Krugman wants readers to think that California is a success rather than a failure because the state now has a budget surplus and there’s been an uptick in job creation.

Here’s more of what he wrote.

There is, I’m sorry to say, no sign of the promised catastrophe. If tax increases are causing a major flight of jobs from California, you can’t see it in the job numbers. Employment is up 3.6 percent in the past 18 months, compared with a national average of 2.8 percent; at this point, California’s share of national employment, which was hit hard by the bursting of the state’s enormous housing bubble, is back to pre-recession levels. …And, yes, the budget is back in surplus. …So what do we learn from the California comeback? Mainly, that you should take anti-government propaganda with large helpings of salt. Tax increases aren’t economic suicide; sometimes they’re a useful way to pay for things we need.

I’m not persuaded, and I definitely don’t think this counts as a “gotcha” moment.

First, I’m a bit surprised that he wants to brag about California’s employment numbers. The Golden State has one of the highest joblessness rates in the nation. Indeed, only four states rank below California.

Krugman might respond by saying that the tax hike generated revenues, thus disproving the Laffer Curve, which is something that does matter to supporters of small government.

But the Laffer Curve doesn’t say that all tax hikes lose revenue. Instead, it says that tax rate increases will have a negative impact on taxable income. It’s then an empirical question to figure out if revenues go up a lot, go up a little, stay flat, or decline.

And what matters most of all is the long-run impact. You can rape and pillage upper-income taxpayers in the short run, particularly if a tax hike is retroactive. In the long run, though, people can move, re-organize their finances, and take other steps to reduce their exposure to the greed of the political class.

California has some natural advantages that make it very desirable. And I suspect that the state’s politicians could get away with above-average taxes simply because certain people will pay some sort of premium to enjoy the climate and geography.

But the number of people willing to pay will shrink as the premium rises.

If you’re a regular reader, you already know I’m a big supporter of tax competition and tax havens.

Here’s the premise: Politicians almost always are focused on their next election and this encourages them to pursue policies that are designed to maximize votes and power within that short time horizon. Unfortunately, this often results in very short-sighted and misguided fiscal policies that burden the economy, such as class-warfare tax policy and counterproductive government spending.

So we need some sort of countervailing force that will make such policies less attractive to the political class. We don’t have anything that inhibits wasteful spending,* but we do have something that discourages politicians from class-warfare tax policy. Tax competition and tax havens give taxpayers some ability to escape extortionate tax policies.

Now we have a couple of new – and very high-profile – examples of this process.

First, a big American drug company is seeking to redomicile in the United Kingdom.

Pfizer proposed a $99 billion acquisition of its British rival AstraZeneca that would allow it to reincorporate in Britain. Doing so would allow Pfizer to escape the United States corporate tax rate and tap into a mountain of cash trapped overseas, saving it billions of dollars each year and making the company more competitive with other global drug makers. …the company wishes to effectively renounce its United States citizenship. …a deal would allow it to follow dozens of other large American companies that have already reincorporated abroad through acquiring foreign businesses. They have been drawn to countries like Ireland and the Netherlands that have lower corporate rates, as well as by the ability to spend their overseas cash without being highly taxed. At least 50 American companies have completed mergers that allowed them to reincorporate in another country, and nearly half of those deals have taken place in the last two years. …American businesses have long complained about the corporate tax rate, arguing that in today’s global marketplace, they are left at a competitive disadvantage.

To get an idea of why companies want to redomicile, here’s another excerpt from the story.

…the British corporate tax rate is currently 21 percent and will soon fall to 20 percent. Analysts at Barclays estimated that for each percentage point less Pfizer paid in taxes, it would save about $200 million a year by reincorporating. People briefed on Pfizer’s discussions said that figure could be substantially higher. That means that Pfizer would be saving at least $1 billion a year in taxes alone. And moving to a lower-tax jurisdiction would allow Pfizer to tap cash that it holds overseas without paying a steep tax to bring it back to the United States. Of the company’s $49 billion in cash, some 70 to 90 percent of that is estimated to be held overseas.

I’m encouraged, by the way, that reporters for the New York Times are smart enough to figure out the destructive impact of worldwide taxation. Too bad the editors at the paper don’t have the same aptitude.

By the way, it’s worth pointing out that Pfizer’s expatriation doesn’t have any negative impact on America.

Pfizer points out that it would retain its corporate headquarters here and remain listed on the New York Stock Exchange. …Pfizer’s chief executive, Ian C. Read, a Briton, said Pfizer found it was hard to compete with other acquirers while saddled with “an uncompetitive tax rate.” Still, he added that even as a reincorporated British company, “we will continue to pay tax bills” in the United States.

The only meaningful change is that the redomiciled company no longer would pay tax to the IRS on foreign-source income, but that’s income that shouldn’t be taxed anyhow!

But it’s not the just the statutory tax rate. The WSJ also points out that the United States also wants companies to pay tax to the IRS on foreign-source income even though that income already has been subject to tax by foreign governments!

The U.S., almost alone among the world’s governments, demands to be paid on a company’s world-wide profits whenever those profits are brought back to the U.S.

In addition to its sales headquarters, Toyota says it plans to move 3,000 professional jobs to the Dallas suburb… Toyota’s chief executive for North America Jim Lentz…listed the friendly Texas business climate…as well as such lifestyle benefits as affordable housing and zero income tax.

This isn’t the first time this has happened.

In 2006, Nissan moved its headquarters from Gardena—north of Torrance—to Franklin, Tennessee. CEO Carlos Ghosn cited Tennessee’s lower business costs.

The bottom line is that greedy California politicians are trying to seize too much money and are driving away the geese that lay the golden eggs.

According to the Tax Foundation, the state-local tax burden is more than 50% higher in California than in Tennessee and Texas, which don’t levy a personal income tax. California’s top 13.3% marginal rate is the highest in the country. …Since 2011 more than two dozen California companies including Titan Laboratories, Xeris Pharmaceuticals, Superconductor Technologies, Pacific Union Financial and Med-Logics have relocated in Texas. Dozens of others such as Roku, Pandora and Oracle have expanded there.

Maryland is the latest state to make its estate tax less onerous, and it’s significant because it’s a staunchly Democratic state indicating that easing the pain of the death tax isn’t just a Republican issue. Today the Maryland Senate passed the measure, already passed by the House, gradually raising the amount exempt from the state’s estate tax to match the generous federal estate tax exemption.

And other blue jurisdictions seem to be learning the same lesson.

In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s budget calls for increasing the state’s estate tax exemption from $1 million to match the federal exemption, and lowering the top rate from 16% down to 10% by fiscal 2017. …A commission on tax reform in the District of Columbia recently recommended raising D.C.’s estate tax exemption from $1 million to the federal level. …In Minnesota, Democratic Governor Mark Dayton has proposed doubling the state estate tax exemption from $1 million to $2 million as part of a bigger tax package.

This is why tax competition is such a wonderful thing. There’s no question that politicians in states such as New York don’t want to lower the burden of the death tax.

Geesh, looking at that list, I guess I’m guilty of – in the words of Paul Krugman – being part of the “plot against France” by trying to discredit that nation’s economy.

Or maybe I’m just ahead of my time because we’re now seeing articles that almost sound like they could have been written by me appearing in establishment outlets such as Newsweek. Check out some amazing excerpts from an article by Janine di Giovanni, who lives in France and serves as the magazine’s Middle East Editor.

…what is happening today in France is being compared to the revocation of 1685. …the king closed churches and persecuted the Huguenots. As a result, nearly 700,000 of them fled France, seeking asylum in England, Sweden, Switzerland, South Africa and other countries. The Huguenots, nearly a million strong before 1685, were thought of as the worker bees of France. They left without money, but took with them their many and various skills. They left France with a noticeable brain drain.

Since the arrival of Socialist President François Hollande in 2012, income tax and social security contributions in France have skyrocketed. The top tax rate is 75 percent, and a great many pay in excess of 70 percent. As a result, there has been a frantic bolt for the border by the very people who create economic growth – business leaders, innovators, creative thinkers, and top executives. They are all leaving France to develop their talents elsewhere.

It’s an exaggeration to say “they are all leaving,” but France is turning Atlas Shrugged from fiction to reality.

And when the people who have the greatest ability leave, that has an impact on economic performance – and ordinary people are the ones who suffer the most.

…the past two years have seen a steady, noticeable decline in France. There is a grayness that the heavy hand of socialism casts. It is increasingly difficult to start a small business when you cannot fire useless employees and hire fresh new talent. Like the Huguenots, young graduates see no future and plan their escape to London. The official unemployment figure is more than 3 million; unofficially it’s more like 5 million.

The article also gives some details that will help you understand why the tax burden is so stifling. Simply stated, the government is far too big and pays for things that should not be even remotely connected to the public sector.

Part of this is the fault of the suffocating nanny state. …As a new mother, I was surprised at the many state benefits to be had if you filled out all the forms: Diapers were free; nannies were tax-deductible; free nurseries existed in every neighborhood. State social workers arrived at my door to help me “organize my nursery.” …The French state also paid for all new mothers, including me, to see a physical therapist twice a week to get our stomachs toned again.

More seriously, all the wasteful spending in France erodes the work ethic and creates a perverse form of dependency.

I had friends who belonged to trade unions, which allowed them to take entire summers off and collect 55 percent unemployment pay. From the time he was an able-bodied 30-year-old, a cameraman friend worked five months a year and spent the remaining seven months collecting state subsidies from the comfort of his house in the south of France. Another banker friend spent her three-month paid maternity leave sailing around Guadeloupe – as it is part of France, she continued to receive all the benefits. Yet another banker friend got fired, then took off nearly three years to find a new job, because the state was paying her so long as she had no job. “Why not? I deserve it,” she said when I questioned her. “I paid my benefits into the system.”

So what’s the bottom line? Well, the author sums up the issue quite nicely.

…all this handing out of money left the state bankrupt. …The most brilliant minds of France are escaping to London, Brussels, and New York rather than stultify at home. …“The best thinkers in France have left the country. What is now left is mediocrity.” From a chief legal counsel at a major French company: “France is dying a slow death. Socialism is killing it…”

As the old saying goes, this won’t end well. Maybe France will suffer a Greek-style meltdown, but perhaps it will “merely” suffer long-run stagnation and decline.

But bad government can screw up a country, even if it does have lots of natural advantages.

And that’s exactly what generations of French politicians have done to France. The tax system has become so bad that more than 8,000 French households had to pay more than 100 percent of their income to the government in 2012.

P.P.S. The big puzzle is why the French put up with so much statism. Polling data from both 2010 and 2013 shows strong support for smaller government, and an astounding 52 percent of French citizens said they would consider moving to the United States if they got the opportunity. So why, then, do they elect statists such as Sarkozy and Hollande?!?

Representatives from dozens of nations have bitterly complained about an awful piece of legislation, called the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), that was enacted back in 2010.

They despise this unjust law because it extends the power of the IRS into the domestic affairs of other nations. That’s an understandable source of conflict, which should be easy to understand. Wouldn’t all of us get upset, after all, if the French government or Russian government wanted to impose their laws on things that take place within our borders?

But it’s not just foreign governments that are irked. The law is so bad that it is causing a big uptick in the number of Americans who are giving up their citizenship.

Americans renouncing U.S. citizenship surged sixfold in the second quarter from a year earlier… Expatriates giving up their nationality at U.S. embassies climbed to 1,131 in the three months through June from 189 in the year-earlier period, according to Federal Register figures published today. That brought the first-half total to 1,810 compared with 235 for the whole of 2008. The U.S., the only nation in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that taxes citizens wherever they reside.

I’m glad that the article mentions that American law is so out of whack with the rest of the world.

Shunned by Swiss and German banks and facing tougher asset-disclosure rules under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, more of the estimated 6 million Americans living overseas are weighing the cost of holding a U.S. passport. …Fatca…was estimated to generate $8.7 billion over 10 years, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

I very much doubt, by the way, that the law will collect $8.7 billion over 10 years.

And it’s worth noting that President Obama initially claimed that his assault on “tax havens” would generate $100 billion every year. If you don’t believe me, click here and listen to his words at the 2;30 mark.

So we started with politicians asserting they could get $100 billion every year. Then they said only $8.7 billion over ten years, or less than $1 billion per year.

You may be tempted to criticize these overseas Americans, but I’ve talked to several hundred of them in the past few years and you can’t begin to imagine how their lives are made more difficult by the illegitimate extraterritorial laws concocted by Washington. Bloomberg has a few more details.

For individuals, the costs are also rising. Getting a mortgage or acquiring life insurance is becoming almost impossible for American citizens living overseas, Ledvina said. “With increased U.S. tax reporting, U.S. accounting costs alone are around $2,000 per year for a U.S. citizen residing abroad,” the tax lawyer said. “Adding factors, such as difficulty in finding a bank to accept a U.S. citizen as a client, it is difficult to justify keeping the U.S. citizenship for those who reside permanently abroad.”

Imagine what your life would be like if you had trouble opening a bank account or conducting all sorts of other financial activities. Things that are supposed to be routine, but are now nightmares.

I collected some of the statements from these overseas Americans. I encourage you to visit this link and get a sense of what they have to endure.

And then keep in mind that all of these problems would disappear if we had the right kind of tax system, such as the flat tax, and didn’t let the tentacles of the IRS extend beyond America’s borders.

P.S. Based on people I’ve met in my international travels, I’d guess that, for every American that officially gives up their citizenship, there are probably a dozen more living overseas who simply drop off the radar screen. Many of these people can’t afford – or can’t stand – to deal with the onerous requirements imposed by hacks, bullies, and lightweights in Washington such as Barbara Boxer.